ABOUT ME

I was born in the Mater Hospital in Sydney and grew up on the Northern Beaches. Unlike most writers I didn’t start writing until my early twenties. In my teens I definitely wasn't writing that three act play to be staged for family and friends; I was too busy sketching old houses, sunbaking on my parent's Halvorsen cruiser, crotcheting granny rugs and chasing boys.
I have variously given birth to a son in South Wales, a daughter in New South Wales, run an internet dating agency, made dreamcatchers and tested telephone lines. My poems and stories have been published here and overseas. I now live in Lake Macquarie and work in Newcastle.

Most of my poems were written and published in the nineties. Below are three unpublished poems. The first is a Sydney poem. the second is one from a transitional period in my life and the third is one of my last, written after I moved to Lake Macquarie.

Bungan Head, December 1992

Awesome, the bull nose jutting out,
a verandah of green and dark green
scrub, houses railroading the cliff.
Looking up they are paper tigers
in this violet light. Impossible that
inside people are waking up,
or dreaming, making plans
or taking on a calm resignation
against the endless days - this
and nothing more. This and the sea.

But the weather adds another dimension
as I walk along the beach - sudden rain
scours Bungan Head with a wash of grey
the beach still in sunlight, above
a temperamental artist in sway
experimenting in light...and dark.
As I shift the sand with slow steps
the rain stops, the sky clears
in a flourish as if to say: now all
you people can come out to play.

Sun Moon and Stars

One day, on holidays, I bought a box
of sun, moon and stars. The sun
beaming with a retrousse nose,
the moon a Mona Lisa smile and
the stars incandescent in bright lacquer.
He said it wouldn't fit inside
our bag and how ridiculous I'd look
on the plane, the box bulging,
threatening to disgorge galaxies.
Had I asked his approval?
Opinion? Who was it for anyway?
At home in our bedroom the box
glowed at night. I had to shut
the sun and moon in the broom
cupboard and scatter the stars
in the bottom drawer of my desk.
Every day their light grew
brighter. Finally my key
to the house wouldn't fit
so I climbed through the window
and gathered them up. With a smile
I put the sun, moon and the stars
into my pearl handbag and left
him to his empty sky.

A Flood

It is, at this moment, a slow drip,
drip, drip, barred behind a wooden
gate, the wood old, breaking away
in flakes, the iron in intricate swirls
curls, rusting. Barely holding back
a torrent. The timber now is dark,
sodden. Please pull back the bolt,
jam it open, say the word and I will
let flow a flood of kisses to drown
you and burn the gate to cinders.

The following story was written years ago but recently revised and was commended in a competition run by the Hunter Writers Centre.

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The Pine

How she would have liked to plant a whole line of them like at Manly. Those beautiful pines, tall and strong. Dark green branches stretching out and giving shade to all the people walking on the footpaths below. Men in white hats and women in white dresses. But she had just the one seed. And so carefully had she taken care of it these last few months. Her father had given it to her for her birthday and she kept it in a small matchbox lined with cotton wool. Now it was spring. The time to plant.

He said he would help this very morning plant it on the hill just as the sun was rising. She parted the white crocheted curtain and looked inside the small bedroom. He was still asleep. So was the baby. She placed the matchbox on the table and lit the woodstove. After a few minutes the kitchen began to warm up and she put the kettle on. Pouring the tea she called to her husband that it was ready and turned around to once again stir the porridge. She heard him throw the bed clothes off and the bed springs creak as he stood up. Crunching her apron in her hands, she knew the grumbling would come.

Why did he have to dig before sunrise when he had a whole day digging ahead of him at the market gardens? Why plant a tree that would take fifty years to reach its full height?
But look at the pines at Manly, she told him. The seafront wouldn't be anywhere near as beautiful if someone, somebody hadn't looked ahead. She was looking ahead. She wanted to know the tree would be growing and growing, shading Fox's Flat, breaking the stark skyline at sunset. It would guard the marshy swamp beyond the lake. In years to come the market gardeners would see it and watch night settle on the hill and become as black as the tree against the sky. It would be her landmark.
Oh, you have the house by the Norfolk Island Pine, how lovely!
"Are you leaving him here?" Her husband pointed to the baby.
"It will only take a few minutes. I left the spade by the door."

Carrying her matchbox and watering can, she climbed the hill at the back of their small house, trying with long strides to catch up to her husband.
Below to her right was one of Mr. Wheeler's cottages. The lamp was on in the kitchen but the other few houses were in darkness. Soon, though, all would be light. From this part of the hill you could see the sand dunes golden with the sunrise. She turned from the ocean and the sun rising and bent to where her husband's digging was turning up the dark soil. Such good rich soil. Deeper and deeper the spade sunk.

"How far did the old man say to plant it?"
"I can't remember but this will do." She knew instinctively the depth was perfect. She laid the seed in the freshly dug soil and carefully upended the watering can, spraying the seed gently and the surrounding soil, watching the earth dampened by the water in an ever-widening circle. She stood back as her husband, quickly and with impatient movements, filled up the hole.

"What a lot of fuss and bother! I hope you spend as much care and attention on my dinner tonight." He shook his head at what seemed a strange ritual to him but his voice was not harsh.

Ever since receiving the seed she had been unable to explain to him that her choice of the right time to plant had nothing to do with the seasons. She had tried to say that she felt the planting time had something to do with an inner part of her willing the tree to grow, to push shoots through the soil. But the spoken words to describe this earthly, darkness and dawn, rain and sunshine intuition, sounded silly to her ears so she kept silent.
She had explained away many times to plant, telling him the weather was not right when in fact her spirits had been low, the baby's cries imprisoning her in the house when all she wanted to do was run along the sand and around the rocks to the next beach and the next. Now she had found the courage to part with the seed and the determination she would need to get through the following days and years if the pine did not grow at all. Now was the time and all she could do was wait.

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